Friday, June 22, 2012

The distinguished children's literature scholar Perry Nodelman, author of The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature and many other important books, has been blogging about his hobby: collecting novelty salt and pepper sets. These sets raise fascinating questions about the nature of pairs, about humor, and about representations of race, gender, and sexuality. As Prof. Nodelman points out, salt and pepper shakers also raise questions about the nature of things: in the language of Racial Innocence, they are scriptive things in that they prompt or invite a range of behaviors, including but also extending far beyond the actions of salting and peppering. Today, Professor Nodelman blogged about scriptive things, Racial Innocence, and salt and pepper sets. He wrote,

As I read Racial Innocence, I learned a great deal I hadn’t expect to learn about how concepts of race have found expression in American culture in a variety of ways, in a number of surprising contexts, and in a number of surprisingly subtle scripted actions invited by a range of interesting (and interestingly scripted) scriptive things. But I also found myself thinking that much of what Bernstein had to say about the scriptive things she described might also be applied to novelty salt and pepper shakers–most obviously, to ones like those representing black stereotypes like the one I’ve described in previous entries, such as this set of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Mose I discussed here and here[.] But, I found myself thinking, why stop there? The concept of scriptive things seemed like an intriguing and, for me, new of thinking about the objects we surround ourselves with and use on a daily basis. It might well throw light, not just on the shaker sets with African American connections, but on a whole range of other sets depicting a whole range of different kinds of subjects. So I’ve decided to do some thinking about that, in a series of entries to follow.

Yes, why stop there? Kitchens--indeed, whole houses--are full of scriptive things that create meaning in a myriad of ways. This is the best part of being an academic: when other scholars apply your ideas in contexts you never could have imagined. I'm so glad that my book has proved useful to Perry Nodelman, and I can't wait for the "entries to follow!"

Racial Innocence

SYNOPSIS OF RACIAL INNOCENCE

In Racial Innocence, Robin Bernstein argues that the concept of "childhood innocence" has been central to U.S. racial formation since the mid-nineteenth century. Children--white ones imbued with innocence, black ones excluded from it, and others of color erased by it--figured pivotally in sharply divergent racial agendas from slavery and abolition to antiblack violence and the early civil rights movement.

Bernstein takes up a rich archive including books, toys, theatrical props, and domestic knickknacks which she analyzes as "scriptive things" that invite or prompt historically-located practices while allowing for resistance and social improvisation. Integrating performance studies with literary and visual analysis, Bernstein offers singular readings of theatrical productions from blackface minstrelsy to Uncle Tom's Cabin to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; literary works by Joel Chandler Harris, Harriet Wilson, and Frances Hodgson Burnett; material culture including Topsy pincushions, Uncle Tom and Little Eva handkerchiefs, and Raggedy Ann dolls; and visual texts ranging from fine portraiture to advertisements for lard substitute. Throughout, Bernstein shows how "innocence" gradually became the exclusive province of white children--until the Civil Rights Movement succeeded not only in legally desegregating public spaces, but in culturally desegregating the concept of childhood itself.

PRAISE FOR RACIAL INNOCENCE

"One of those rare books that shifts the paradigm—a book that, in years to come, will be recognized as a landmark in children’s literature and childhood studies. . . . [F]ew scholars can write a sentence like Bernstein can: packed with insight, theoretically sophisticated, and yet lucid—even, at times, lyrical.”Philip Nel, Children’s Literature

"Nineteenth and early twentieth-century material culture comes alive in Robin Bernstein's brilliant study of the racialized and gendered ideologies that shape, inform and continue to haunt notions of American childhood into the present day. Through imaginative and masterfully innovative archival research, Bernstein shows how representations of childhood and child's play are integral to the making of whiteness and blackness and citizenship in this country. Racial Innocence is a groundbreaking book that for the first time illuminates the powerful and critical connections between constructions of girlhood, racial formations and American popular culture." Daphne Brooks, Princeton University

"I know of virtually no one of her generation who writes with this kind of verve, authority and pleasure." Karen Sanchez-Eppler, Amherst College

About Me

I am a cultural historian who writes about two subjects: theatre/performance and childhood. Sometimes I study these topics together; other times I study them separately. In addition to Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights, my books include the edited anthology Cast Out: Queer Lives in Theater and a Jewish feminist children’s book titled Terrible, Terrible! My essays have appeared in PMLA, Social Text, African American Review, American Literature, J19, Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, and other journals. I am the Dillon Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. I'm also a faculty member in Harvard's doctoral program in American Studies and undergraduate program in Theater, Dance, and Media. With Stephanie Batiste and Brian Herrera, I edit the book series Performance and American Cultures for New York University Press. Visit me at http://scholar.harvard.edu/robinbernstein/home.